The Golden Eagles return their four leading scorers from last season, all seniors, and bring in the deepest recruiting class of Doc Sadler's four-year tenure in Hattiesburg, creating a strong roster able to build upon last season's 16-18 overall record and 7-11 in Conference USA.

"I think we've got the best guards in the league," Sadler said Monday. "Now it's their job to go and prove that they are."

That quartet of guards combined last season to average 50.1 points and 11.6 assists per game. This includes Griffin's 201 assists, the third most in Conference USA, and Edwards' 566 points, sixth in the league.

Griffin and Edwards said they're willing and capable leaders trying to take advantage of their final seasons in Hattiesburg. They are both aware of the changing attitude and perception surrounding USM basketball after the team won two games in the C-USA tournament last March.

Sadler said he's building his team to be successful at conference tournament time. Some of that involves a challenging non-conference schedule. The Golden Eagles have scheduled trips to Kansas State, Wichita State and South Dakota in December, not to mention an appearance in the Cancun Challenge in November.

"I'm challenging this team to be the best it can be come January for league play, but more specifically for March when we get into the league tournament, much like last year when I thought we were playing our best basketball all year the last couple weeks of the season," Sadler said. "I'd like to be doing that again this year because I think that this team would be good enough to win the tournament."

Of course, the 2018-19 season is going to be a bizarre one in Conference USA.

The league has instituted a new scheduling policy. The last two and a half weeks before the conference tournament won't be scheduled until February, ensuring the league's top teams play each other more often to increase the strength of schedules for the best teams the C-USA has to offer.

Sadler has made it no secret he's not a fan of the new rule. He thinks it was put into place to raise the seeding of the one team to earn a bid, and not to help more Conference USA teams qualify for the NCAA tournament.

In Sadler's mind, Conference USA is still a one-bid league. Not because of the quality of play, but because of the rules.

"In my opinion the rules of the game of getting into the tournament have changed to benefit the Power 5s," Sadler said. "I don't blame them. If you've got the stroke, benefit yourself.

"But that's the game that we're in. To sit there and know that Loyola and Gonzaga last year supposedly would not have gotten into the tournament if they didn't win their conference tournaments and you've got one team that makes the Elite Eight and another team that makes the Final Four, it's stacked against you."

That's why Sadler has turned his focus to building the best team possible for Southern Miss to win Conference USA, regular season and postseason. A lot of that has begun with this year's squad, a team stacked with more talent on the low post than Sadler said he's had in his years in Hattiesburg, plus the aforementioned talent at guard.

But Sadler said he wants to continue to stretch what he's been doing at USM to the future. And to do that, Sadler said he's going to build locally.

"We can have 13 scholarships with kids from Mississippi and Mississippi junior colleges and win this league," Sadler said. "I believe that. My dream would be to have every player from Mississippi or from a junior college in Mississippi. If we can get the ones that we wanted, I think we can win the league with them."

Southern Miss opens the 2018-19 men's basketball season with a matchup at SMU at 2 p.m. on Nov. 11.